


Nothing Left To Burn

by rilla



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-04 09:15:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4132084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Gossip Girl au, written a long time ago. Louis is the golden boy and Harry is not; they've been best friends for years but Harry takes a turn towards self destruction after he's hit by tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Left To Burn

**Author's Note:**

> I started this on the 1D kink meme about a hundred years ago. It won't be finished any time soon but I always kind of hate it when people delete fic, so it's going up again. Because it was written so long ago the characterisation is off at times, whoops, but I think (hope?) it's readable. Some people do wip amnesties, I do... whatever this is.

Harry’s late for English again, ten minutes past the bell, and when he comes in he just growls out an indistinct apology to the substitute teacher before pushing through the desks towards his seat at the back of the classroom. Louis looks at him, the way that his dark hair’s rumpled and his tie’s askew, his top button opened to the collarbone, the pale skin there stretched over delicate bone, the hollow of his throat white and smooth, and he thinks, _Hello_. 

These days Harry doesn’t particularly bother with a schoolbag. Louis knows what’s about to happen; he’ll sit down, he’ll rummage through the inside pocket of his blazer. Maybe he’ll line up some of its contents carefully on his desk, pulling out everything slowly: his rolling papers, some money, too much money usually, a fifty pound note or a couple of twenties and a handful of change; his lighter, his lunch card, his old Prefect badge, his phone with tangled headphones attached to it unless he’s already got one headphone in his ear, music pulsing out faintly across the room. Sometimes his tie’s in there when it’s not looped loosely around his neck, ready to unfurl messily as Harry puts it on the desk with his other possessions as he searches for his old blue biro, the end of it all splayed plastic, chewed away like Harry’s fingernails. Once he’s found it, he’ll lean over to whoever’s closest – the seat directly next to him is vacant, which Louis is fairly sure was a specific choice of his, but there’s a pretty girl with a sweep of golden hair just across the aisle who Louis thinks wouldn’t mind being bothered by Harry – and smile sweetly, request a sheet of paper which will inevitably be discarded at the end of the lesson. Harry likes to keep up the pretence of keeping notes in classes. Louis isn’t sure why he bothers to do that.

“Excuse me,” the substitute teacher says, something like outrage on her face. Louis is pretty sure she’s trying to maintain some discipline by choosing a scapegoat to yell at, because there’s a buzz of low-level chatter across the classroom and she doesn’t seem to be able to control them, despite the fact that they’re only a group of fairly well-behaved private school boys in an A-level class, so not the most challenging lesson in the history of time. Even still, Niall won’t stop laughing at everything because he drank two bottles of Lucozade at lunch and that turns him into a psychotically giggling nightmare, and Zayn’s carefully drawing an intricate pattern onto the back of his hand. But Liam’s got his sheet of paper in front of him, everything perfectly underlined and probably misspelled; Louis wonders sometimes if maybe he just likes making everyone feel bad, but equally he’s also fairly certain that Liam is maybe the nicest and most genuinely good person he’s ever known, so it’s probably just that he wants to pass his exams. “You’re ten minutes late,” the teacher says desperately, “you enter without bothering to provide any explanation and without any of your equipment—”

“All right, all right,” Harry mutters almost to himself, patting down his pockets like he’s about to begin the slow and deliberate search for his pen, “calm it, will you.” He begins to heap items onto the table, and Louis watches the way that his hands are moving. He has long bony fingers, a little skinny and a little knobbly, and hands that are wide yet thin and oddly delicate, and Louis throws him a look that means, _Careful now_. Harry looks away like he hasn’t even registered it, and finally says, “Aha,” as he produces his old, battered biro with an edge of bewilderment and satisfaction. There’s a low rumble of laughter. The teacher turns a faint shade of puce, and Harry takes a seat. Louis is pretty sure that he’s doing it far more slowly than he needs to, because there’s the slightest hint of an insolent smile curling on his lips as he scrapes his chair out from under his desk. Louis’s throat aches for him, a sort of impotent annoyance and a need to have this whole scene over with, to have it swept under the rug. But something that he is painfully aware that Harry’s good at is pushing people’s buttons, just to see them fall apart. 

There’s quiet as he settles himself, everyone else in the class looking at him, glancing back to the teacher as though they’re willing her to do either something or nothing, to crack or to not crack. She takes a breath. She’s sort of young. Really, Louis pities her. She says with relief, “Anyway, _Porphyria’s Lover_ —”

“Paper,” Harry says vaguely from the back of the classroom, as though it’s going to magically fall out of thin air into his hands. He looks around as though it’s going to appear somewhere. “Paper, paper,” he muses, and something in Louis’s chest tightens and breaks. He rips a few sheets out of his folder, twists to his feet and moves to the back of the classroom to smack them down in front of Harry.

“There,” he says, and Harry blinks up at him.

“Thanks,” he says, his eyes dark and blank. Louis can smell the low sweet scent of pot on him, which isn’t a surprise, but the tang of whisky is, because he’s pretty sure that Harry’s always been smarter than that at least.

Louis says, “Mate,” a little bit like a plea and a little bit like a reprimand, but Harry just looks down at his paper and focuses on writing his name on it in small, perfect handwriting. It makes something in Louis’s gut twist, the fact of it combined with the absolute knowledge that there’s nothing that he can do, and no way that he can make it better. He’s not even the sort of person who generally cares all that much about making things better. That’s more Liam’s role, and Eleanor’s sometimes, except for when it comes to Harry. She thought that Harry was a Lost Cause even before the events of the summer. Louis isn’t sure that he wants to know what she thinks of him now.

“Can you please sit down,” the teacher says shrilly, and Louis does, with one last backward glance at Harry. He’s still staring at his paper intently although he’s stopped writing, and the teacher changes the Powerpoint slide on the board to a list of questions. “Answer these,” she says brusquely, before sitting down heavily and apparently giving up, and so they do.

The classroom simmers down into almost-quiet, with occasional pen scratches and deep sighs, and occasionally Niall whispering to Liam before Liam shushes him. Beside Louis, Zayn’s still drawing on his hand, intricate delicate patterns that are all twisted and interlocked together like elaborate birdcages. Louis does question one and question two and he’s halfway through question three when the teacher says, “You at the back, how dare you,” and Louis turns around just in time to see Harry look up sleepily from his desk.

“How dare you fall asleep in this lesson,” she says desperately, and Harry says, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you were saying because I was asleep,” and then he laughs a bit, carefree like he’s floating on hot air. Louis feels sick for him, because sure, he gets into his fair share of trouble but he doesn’t just disregard everything the way that Harry seems to, and the idea of watching him get into some serious shit isn’t really Louis’s idea of how to spend English class in a fun and productive way.

“Don’t answer me back,” the teacher says, redder than before, and then for some reason she seems to think it’d be a great idea to start laying into him. She tells him about his lack of respect and about his lack of discipline and about how ashamed his parents would be of him, and—

It’s at this point that Niall interjects and says as though he can’t help it, “His mam died at the summer.”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “I don’t have parents any more. My dad’s fucked off and my mum’s dead. So I think that might invalidate that part of your argument.”

His face is still carefully blank as the class pulses with suppressed words that they want to put in for him, and Louis watches as the teacher’s face drops, the self-righteous expression falling off her like rainwater, and he wonders for a moment just how many people he encounters every day who are wearing invisible masks and pretending to be someone else. Someone happier, or someone okay, at least.

She doesn’t say anything, and Harry continues still in that dry blunt tone, “Anyway, like I said, my mum died, so I get special treatment in class, as a general rule.” He’s all hooded eyes, his mouth an unhappy sarcastic twist. “You’re not allowed to tell me off in case I fall apart. Fingers crossed for you, I won’t. I’m very lucky that everyone cuts me some slack, and I’m aware that you’re new so you’ll probably work out how we run things soon. Now can we please get on with learning about Jane Eyre?”

“We’re doing Robert Browning, not Charlotte Bronte,” Niall chips in from the front of the classroom. Harry glances at him and seems to smile in a way that’s accidentally genuine, a sudden bright flash that makes Louis happy and then makes him hurt for how much Harry’s changed lately. He misses proper smiles from him. It’s funny how you can miss something so small and ache for it so much. He doesn’t really understand that.

“My mistake,” Harry says, and narrows his eyes at the board before apparently beginning to copy down the first question. As he looks back up at the board he catches Louis’s eye. He seems to react before he makes himself look away, and shrugs a bit, defensively.

 _Fuck’s sake, Harry_ , Louis mouths at him, and Harry picks up one of his spare pieces of paper and writes on it in big blue writing, MEET ME AFTER CLASS. He holds it up and smiles one of his sweetest smiles and Louis rolls his eyes before nodding and turning back to his work. After a moment he hears a loud spluttery cough from Harry’s direction and turns round again, vaguely aware that that’s his cue. Harry’s holding up another piece of paper that says SOZ BABES, and smiling even more brightly, and Louis flips him the finger, unable to stop himself from laughing silently over at him before turning around yet again. He can’t help grinning just a bit, though, cool relief flooding through his veins that not all of Harry is lost, and when a ball of paper whizzes over his shoulder and onto his desk a moment later he isn’t all that surprised. It hasn’t got any writing on it, just a big blue heart with Cupid’s arrow stuck right through it, drawn in Harry’s spidery blue biro. Louis rolls his eyes, crumples the note back into a ball, and pushes it into his blazer pocket. He doesn’t feel like throwing it away just yet.

*

Although Louis waits after school for Harry he doesn’t show up. He waits in the school foyer with its high vaulted ceiling, and then he goes for a wander: he looks across the long green rugby fields, sticks his head into the wooden-panelled changing rooms. It’s been a while since Harry quit the team, but Louis still thinks it’s worth checking. He waits in the car park after that in his car, eyes trained on the school entrance and its big wooden doors. He waits for half an hour before deciding he feels too stupid to wait around any longer. He sends his sixth text to Harry, saying, _Whatever, I’m leaving_ , and then he does.

*

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” Eleanor says to him, not for the first time. “Harry’s not exactly…” She sighs. Eleanor is kind. Eleanor is always kind, in a self-conscious way, as though she knows she has to be in order for people to like her and to maintain her reputation. But her kindness for Harry seems to be gradually waning, along with her patience for him. Eleanor seems to be of the opinion that if you’re sad or if you’re grieving you can just snap out of it, and Louis gets that, kind of. He doesn’t have all that much time for people who wallow in misery. But he can still feel a ball of annoyance settling slowly onto his chest as she continues, “He’s not exactly well at the moment, is he.”

“His mum died,” Louis points out.

She rolls her eyes at him. “Yes,” she concedes, “that’s true—”

“She had cancer,” Louis reminds her. “He watched her die. He was with her. His mum, El.”

“So that makes it okay for you to have to wait around for hours while he chooses not to show up?” she enquires, and it isn’t a cruel voice, it isn’t even nasty or rude; it’s cool and thoughtful, as though she’s genuinely wondering, and Louis can feel whatever anger he felt as he was waiting around for Harry slowly dissipating, sliding off him like rain down car windows.

“Yeah, it makes it a little bit okay,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes and shakes her head just a little, just enough that he’ll notice, not enough that he’ll protest. The ball of annoyance inside his chest gets heavier and he swallows and glances away through the window. El’s house is the size of most of his friends’ houses, which means that it is essentially larger than any house in London has the right to be; it backs onto a rectangular garden, most of which is taken up with a square white lump of glass which contains a large open plan kitchen that her mum had put in last year on top of the back garden where El learned to ride her bike and where her trampoline used to be. At home Louis’s garden backs onto a square that’s open to all the houses on his road, all elegant trees and amazing hiding places that he loved when he was little. He remembers spending endless summers there with Harry when they were little; he still likes it, especially late at night, but he doesn’t think Eleanor would be too keen.

He looks away from the odd white cube, and says, “So what’re we doing this evening?”

She looks more comfortable now the subject’s been turned back to them and to their lives and away from Louis’s difficult friend, who now seems to be resolutely trouble in her eyes. “I don’t know. We should do our homework. And then…”

“And then,” Louis echoes as she comes over to him, loops her arms around his neck and laughs a bit before leaning in to kiss him, and when they’re done he says, “More of this,” and she laughs and kisses him again.

They don’t actually end up having sex, which is probably for the best because it tends to be Louis’s responsibility to provide the condoms and he doesn’t have any, and not only is he pretty certain that he doesn’t want to be a teen father, but he also doesn’t think that there’s any way in hell that Eleanor would find condomless sex remotely acceptable. Sex with her lately has become sort of – not stale, he thinks, as he gets in the car that his father’s sent to pick him up. Sex is still sex and it’s still great. But pornography has taught him that there’s more to life than the missionary position, and anyway, her body still seems like the sort of unmappable territory that he will never be able to fully negotiate or understand. She’s slim and lithe with tumbling brown hair and she always smells like – like girl, in a really good way, and he likes her and all, but there seems to be something that’s gone missing, somewhere along the lines. Something that her eyes held once that they don’t seem to hold any more. It’s something that he’d like to get back, although he isn’t sure to define it, so he doesn’t know how.

It’s dark outside, his bag next to him full of mostly-completed homework, and the golden streetlights are glowing softly on the roads. It’s a nice area of London that he lives in, he’ll concede that. There’s not all that much going on but it’s nice, tall townhouses with high ceilings and big windows. They’ve lived in his house ever since he was little, so for almost as long as he can remember; his grandfather owned and later sold a chain of hotels, which Louis is pretty sure makes them new money, but they’ve always fit in with the older families fairly easily. Harry’s old money, ancient money, the sort of money that has estates in the countryside with stables full of horses and shooting ranges. Louis’s been shooting, though, and he doesn’t think it’s all that. He isn’t that big a fan of guns, although he can see the appeal of shooting a clay pigeon out of the sky, the aim and the satisfaction of it. He’s perfectly fine with eating cows and all that, but the thought of looking a stag in the eyes and then shooting it between them makes him feel a little queasy. 

They draw into his road, which is still and leafy, the trees casting skeleton shadows onto the pavement, and Pete, who’s been their family driver as long as Louis can remember, pulls up outside their house. “Thanks, mate,” Louis says, considers ruffling Pete’s hair and manages to refrain, and climbs out of the car. He winds his way up their garden path; it’s a little damp underfoot, old wet leaves a little slippery, and he thinks for a moment that his mother’s not going to be happy with their gardener if someone trips and falls.

He’s fishing for his keys in his pocket when a tall dark figure looms out of the shadows and says, “Lou?”

Louis manfully fights off a heart attack and manages not to vomit everywhere, and he hears a low rumble of a laugh and Harry’s voice saying, “Oh my God, did I actually scare you?”

“No,” Louis lies, and he tries to glare but he can’t bring himself to; Harry’s laughing still, pressing himself up against his side like an affectionate cat, and he’s still searching for his keys as Harry rubs his cheek against his shoulder. The smell of alcohol’s ripe on him, rolling off him, and Louis is partial to the occasional drink but he’s not fond of being the sober one, so he has to resist the urge to shake him off. 

“Louis,” Harry says, his voice thick and deliberate, “can I stay here tonight?”

“Why?” Louis shoots him a suspicious look as he finally finds his keys and begins to open the door. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t _do_ anything,” Harry mutters, and there’s considerably less bodily contact now as he mumbles, “I should just go.”

“No,” Louis says, a bit too sudden and jerky, and Harry looks at him, caught still in the moonlight like a wild animal in a trap. Louis continues, “You can stay.”

Harry visibly relaxes. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Louis isn’t all that sure what Harry would be going home to, anyway, what with a dead mum and a fucked off dad and a—actually, Louis isn’t sure. “Where’s your stepdad, anyway?” he asks.

“Away,” Harry says mulishly. “Gemma’s at uni. Just me.”

“Not any more,” Louis says, and there’s a genuine smile that creeps across Harry’s face like a shadow as Louis’s front door finally opens. His hallway is big and bright but in the evenings it always seems a little cold. Harry follows him in and starts, clumsily, to undo his shoelaces. “Mum,” Louis calls, and after a moment there’s footsteps. “Harry’s here,” he adds, a little like a warning, and Harry says “Hello,” quietly to no one in particular. “Harry’s here,” he echoes to the floor, and Louis has to bite back a smile.

His mum appears after a moment, wearing a dressing gown, her makeup still on, her hair still smooth and dark and pushed off her face. “Harry,” she says, not as effusive as she’d be if Harry had bigger breasts and was called Eleanor. “Hello.”

Louis waves at her. She sighs a bit, doesn’t wave back, and says, “Do you want sheets for the spare room?” 

Harry’s humming softly behind Louis, quiet and indistinct and significantly drunken, and there are odd giggles building up in Louis's chest, like bubbles that are bursting in his throat. He can still smell alcohol and slight muskiness, as though Harry’s been out for a long time. “I think we’ll be okay in my room,” he says.

“I can get Olive to put out some towels for him,” she says, and vanishes again before Louis can argue that he’s perfectly capable of finding towels for Harry, if the occasion should arise that he’ll need them. Olive is Louis’s old nanny; she looks after his sisters now, but he’s pretty sure that he’s still her favourite.

“Done,” Harry announces from the floor, and wriggles his toes in his socks. “Are we going to put out the sofabed? The sofabed’s cool, Lou. Comfy for a two-way piece of furniture.”

Louis chooses to ignore that. “C’mon, mate. Up.”

Harry clambers to his feet, slow and deliberate, and Louis says, “You know, you’re not going to enjoy history tomorrow morning at all.”

Harry laughs a bit, almost real, and says, “I never do anyway.”

“Yeah, well.” Louis follows him up the stairs, watching his feet just in case, and when they reach the top Harry turns abruptly, almost losing his balance. His eyes are pale green in the faint light, his jaw’s set, and he says, “Louis. Sorry. I forgot about you after school.”

“That’s all right.” It is, mostly; Louis isn’t the one with a dead mum, so he’s cutting Harry some slack. 

“It’s not,” Harry argues, his hands on Louis’s front, straightening his braces, fingers slipping between them and his shirt. His hands feel warm and oddly certain, as though he knows precisely what to do, like he feels certain with Louis’s body. Louis doesn’t mind him doing it. He doesn’t like it, exactly, but he definitely doesn’t dislike it either. Harry touching him a lot is just sort of a thing that happens when Harry's in a mood like this. “Did you go to El’s?” Harry asks, pulling Louis’s braces a little and letting them snap back against his chest and stomach. It stings a little, and Louis reaches out for Harry’s hands automatically, grabbing onto them and holding them back.

“Yeah. She’s fine. She says hi,” Louis says, and he knows there’s enough of a curl on his mouth that Harry’ll laugh, dismiss it, roll his eyes, but he doesn’t; instead he just nods, the corners of his mouth downturned and his hands still in Louis’s.

“Bed,” he suggests, and tugs himself away from Louis and moves down the hallway to his bedroom. The hallway’s dim and dark, Louis’s sisters closed away asleep in their rooms, and Harry’s quiet and careful in his socked feet. His hair’s messy, his shoulders slim in his white shirt. He’s getting taller, which is something that’s strange. Louis is used to being the taller one, but he thinks that Harry’s in the process of overtaking him. He wonders what Harry’s mum would have said about that. He wonders what Harry’s mum would have said about a lot of things.

Harry’s already in his room when he reaches it, looking enquiringly at the sofabed in the corner of it, which is covered in clothes and books and Louis’s guitar and half his sister’s Barbie collection. “We need to tidy,” Harry tells him, as though the idea isn’t remotely obvious.

“Yeah. I know. I’m gross.” Louis picks up a couple of t-shirts and folds them into his laundry basket, and then he stacks a couple of books onto his shelf. When he turns around again Harry’s sitting on the edge of his bed, and then he flops backwards with a satisfied flump. “You’re sleeping with me, then,” Louis says, and it’s not a surprise; he remembers the days right after Harry’s mum died when Harry turned up with dark terrible eyes so that he could curl into Louis’s bed with him, shaking and half-awake until dawn, night after night, until one day he just stopped. Louis never particularly asked him about it. He thinks that maybe he should have. He can see Harry’s stomach, the pale line of it above the waistband of his jeans, but looks up at his face instead.

“I like it here,” Harry says to the ceiling. “I like your bed and your… and your… has Eleanor been here?”

“No,” Louis says, eyes still on Harry, who’s squinting suspiciously at the sheets and half sitting up, “not recently.”

“Good.” Harry falls back down onto his back again, and then he begins to wriggle out of his clothes, his socks and his shirt and his jeans, until he’s down to his boxers, all bare skin on Louis’s bed. He looks skinnier than he used to, and there’s a bruise on his hipbone, and a couple on his neck. “I had a nice evening,” he says, as though he can tell that Louis is looking. “I met this guy…”

“Name?” Louis asks, and Harry frowns like he can’t remember. “Doesn’t matter,” Louis says curtly, and there’s something about that, about male hands on Harry’s body, that he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like being pushed into this role, of looking after Harry. Sometimes he thinks it’s too difficult for him. “I’m glad you had fun,” he says, and isn’t, not entirely; he imagines hands on Harry’s body, on his hips and on his ribs, someone’s mouth on Harry’s neck, some guy whose name Harry doesn’t know. It’s okay that Harry’s into guys, sometimes. Louis doesn’t mind or anything. He's not some homophobic prick. There’s sometimes this odd clench in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about it, though, a cold hiss of something that resembles jealousy more closely than Louis would like.

“You’re still my number one boy,” Harry carols, and laughs as he crawls underneath Louis’s sheets. Louis looks at him, can’t help but smile a bit, and moves over to the doorway to flip off the lights. He hasn’t cleaned his teeth or finished his homework but Harry’s in his bed, all warm naked skin and soft untruthful words, and Louis pulls his shoes, his jeans, his shirt off, and coils into the space next to him. The sheets are warm around Harry’s body and his breath smells like whisky as he whispers “Hi,” right into Louis’s face.

“Hi,” Louis whispers back, and Harry’s nose is almost touching his, his soft hair batting against Louis’s forehead. Louis’s sheets are going to smell like smoke and booze and probably sex, from whatever marks have been left on Harry’s skin, but he can’t bring himself to care. “You’re warm. It’s nice that you’re here.”

“It’s nice that you’re here too,” Harry whispers nonsensically. “It wouldn’t be your bed without you.”

Louis hmms out a laugh, and for a moment he thinks about the morning, about Harry’s hasty and inevitable exit, or his cold blank face over cereal if he gets caught by Louis’s mum, and he isn’t sure how he’s going to stand it. He settles onto his back, one hand behind his head, staring at the ceiling. There’s a thin strip of light from the gap in his curtains, which he should probably fix. And then there’s Harry right there, pressing over him, into his side, the nudge of his nose into the place where Louis’s neck and shoulder meet, his forehead against Louis’s neck, his breath warm and Louis’s insides clenching at it, the deepest affection he has ever known coiling inside his stomach. He has never felt such an urge to try to reshape the world for someone before, to break it down and to rebuild it into a shape that they can recognise and live in. Harry’s breath is slowing, gentle and soft, and Louis curls his hand over the hard ridge of Harry’s hipbone, as though somehow by doing that he can keep him there until morning.

*

When Louis wakes up at around four, Harry’s still there, his arm flung across Louis’s middle, his dark eyelashes casting thick spiky shadows on his cheeks. He looks peaceful in the faint dark moonlight, pale on Louis’s blue pillows, his hair a tumble of curls that smells slightly unwashed, his skin gleaming and perfect. Louis looks at him for a moment, his eyes gummy with sleep and the shape of Harry misty and magical, swimming in front of him like a dream, and then Louis closes his eyes and sighs his way back into sleep.

*

Next time he wakes up it’s because his alarm’s going off and it’s seven-thirty. His bed is cool and empty and Harry is gone, his room still around him, grey morning light peeking through the gap in the curtains. He struggles to his feet and out into the hallway, winces at the light, and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. Then he staggers downstairs, still hoping somehow that Harry’s there, eating his sisters’ Coco Pops and looking as though he’d rather be sitting by himself at the bus stop at the end of the road, except there’s no one except his mum in the kitchen.

Louis mumbles a greeting to her and she says before he can ask, “Harry’s gone. His shoes aren’t in the hallway.”

“Oh,” Louis says. He opens the fridge and gets himself some orange juice, mostly to distract himself from the way that the bottom of his stomach seems to be collapsing into itself and folding away. 

“Sorry,” his mum says, and although he’s perfectly aware that she’s not overly unhappy about the fact that Harry’s no longer in her house, Louis can definitely hear a bit of sympathy in her voice. He shrugs, and it takes a moment of staring unseeingly into the fridge to get his face under control so he can turn around and smile blandly at her. She looks at him carefully and continues, “How is he?”

“He’s fine,” Louis says. He isn’t sure that his mum cares all that much. He knows she cares to a certain degree, where she doesn’t have to do anything about it, but he’s also fairly certain that if she has to start actually helping Harry out with anything she won’t be too happy. She quirks an eyebrow and he elaborates, “He’s sad, I think.”

“Well.” His mum shrugs as though she’s saying that’s natural, which Louis supposes it is. Then she says, “I’ve got a meeting this morning. I must dash. I’ll see you later,” and billows out of the kitchen on a cloud of white silk dressing gown and the rich perfume that she’s always worn, ever since Louis was little. He stands and looks after her and thinks about how early Harry must have woken up to leave, and what it’s like to unfurl yourself from around someone else’s sleeping body, and to leave the bed and to leave the room, and to not look back.

*

Harry isn’t in History first period, which isn’t entirely surprising. Being at school during first period is not a particular strength of Harry’s. He generally manages to show up for registration afterwards, but even still as Louis sits between Liam and Niall in their form room he feels a little antsy, a little jittery, like he’s got bugs crawling inside his skin, like sitting still’s a very, very difficult task that he can’t quite accomplish. It’s something that he feels fairly often, and it’s something that he’s managing to suppress more and more with age; when he was younger people mentioned ADHD to him a lot but these days he’s pretty sure that he just has a lot of energy. He plays a lot of sport, mostly to tire himself out: he plays soccer and rugby and he’s on the athletics team and he goes out with the climbing club when he gets the chance, and on the whole that means that he can sit in lessons without energy building up inside his fingertips until he explodes at someone. It’s easier to sit down and shut up these days, particularly with what his father’s been saying to him about taking over the company when he’s older, and how he needs to start preparing for that. And anyway, there’s always Harry on the other side of the classroom with his hooded green eyes and with tired lines etched around his mouth, and that’s enough to beat energy out of anyone.

He doesn’t realise he’s shifting in his chair, eyes flickering over to the window, until Liam looks at him and touches his arm and says quietly, “You’re okay,” and he somehow manages to relax. Liam smiles at him then, gentle, and on his other side Niall says, “Fuck, marry, kill, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Tom Jones.”

Louis makes a face at him. “Two of them are dead already,” he points out.

“Yeah, I know,” Niall says. “Pretend they aren’t.”

“Gross,” Louis tells him succinctly, and looks at his phone under the desk. There are absolutely zero new messages from Harry on it, which makes him feel both relieved and like shit, and then the door swings open and Harry walks in. He looks normal, his tie knotted loosely around his neck and his top button undone, his shirt half hanging out, wearing black boots instead of anything resembling school shoes, and the sleeves of his blazer pushed up to his elbows.

“You look like you’re in Wham,” Zayn tells him, and Harry laughs over at them before sitting down across the classroom next to Aiden, who is tall and beautiful and a scholarship boy and apparently someone who Harry’ll deign to talk to when he doesn’t want to talk to his real friends. Harry mutters something to him and Aiden rolls his eyes and pulls a cigarette out of his pocket and hands it over. Harry pushes it into his own pocket, and Louis feels a surge of anger that’s entirely irrational, because the fact that Harry shows up drunkenly at his house and falls asleep in his bed isn’t necessarily a reason for him to stay there. Being someone’s point of refuge doesn’t mean that you’re something they care about once they’re feeling a little better, and it’s something that Louis doesn’t want to get bitter over, not in the slightest. Harry looks over at him and accidentally catches his eye. The corners at the edge of his mouth deepen like he’s frowning and he looks down at the table, and the annoyance bubbling inside Louis’s chest suddenly vanishes, like a clenched fist relaxing and releasing sadness instead, this deep grief that he can’t quite explain.

*

Louis calls El at break time, from round the back of the school buildings in case he gets caught, because he doesn’t particularly want to get his phone confiscated by some stupid teacher who won’t understand. It’s not that he thinks she’ll make him feel better, although it’s a possibility; rather, he wants to hear her voice and to know that somewhere across London she still exists. He explains to her that Harry stayed over at his house and then vanished, and there’s a pause that’s slightly awkward before she says, “Well, what did you expect? He’s _Harry_ ,” and Louis feels miserable and a bit sick as he says, “He’s my best friend.”

“My ears are burning,” a voice says behind him, deep and careful and irreducibly Harry, and Louis feels something unpleasant happening in the pit of his stomach. El’s still talking, saying something about how sometimes friendships end and you have to deal with that the best way you can, except Louis is facing Harry now, who’s mouthing, _That Eleanor_? 

Louis nods and Harry grins, slow and easy as he takes a couple of steps towards Louis. _Louis_ , he mouths, pretends to flip long hair over his shoulder, pouts full lips, and Louis glares at him, twitches away a bit as Harry approaches him, his voice a low hiss as he says, “Oh, Louis. Your best friend’s such a dick. I’m so vastly superior with my charitable endeavours and my amazing tits,” and Louis mouths _Fuck off_ , taking an angry step backwards, and his shoulder hits the wall.

“Fuck!” he says, too loud, and Eleanor says, “Louis?” and he says, “Right. El. I – sorry. Harry’s here now, and—”

“Of course he is,” she says, sharper than usual, and then, “Call me later, if you really do want to talk about this,” and then she’s gone. 

Harry tilts his head to one side, eyes still on Louis’s face, standing a little too close, and Louis can see a bruise on his neck, livid and purple, and there’s an odd compulsion that forces him to reach out and touch it. Harry’s skin’s warm as Louis’s palm curves over his neck, and he sucks in a short sharp intake of breath as Louis touches him, and nudges towards him even more.

“Oh, Louis,” he says, still being Eleanor somehow, still being this girl that Louis is supposed to love and who’s just hung up the phone on him and who he can’t really bring himself to worry too much about, “Louis, you really are a fuck-up, aren’t you,” and Louis lets go of him as he feels Harry’s hand tight on his hip. Harry’s eyes are intent on his, strangely dark and his mouth an odd bent crescent as he mutters, “Just like your mate. Better be careful unless you end up like Harry.”

“She wouldn’t say that,” Louis says, and he’s trying to sound scornful, trying to brush it off as he says, “She knows I’m not going to end up like you.”

“Yeah, because that’d be a fucking cursed fate, wouldn’t it.” The pressure on Louis’s hip abates a bit, but Harry leans forward instead, the lean line of his body pressed against Louis’s, and he thinks it should probably feel weird but it doesn’t. Harry smiles, this sweet sleepy lazy smile that makes Louis think of Saturday morning cereal when they were eight and getting drunk for the first time when they were fourteen, and then Harry whispers in his low melodious voice: “Your girlfriend’s a nasty self-entitled cow, and you need to stop following this pretence that she's a queen and you're just one of her lowly subjects.”

Louis waits for the anger. He waits for the fury, for the defence of Eleanor that should rise automatically to his lips, for the fierce protective surge that he feels every time someone talks shit about Harry, but it doesn’t come. Nothing comes. He just stands there with the warmth of Harry against him and Harry’s eyes intent and expressionless, and then comes the suffocation, the inability to know how to react, to feel. He flings him off, shudders Harry away and shifts along the wall, eyes still on him. “She isn’t a cow,” he says staunchly.

Harry surveys him coolly. “But you do let her push you around.”

“She’s my girlfriend,” Louis says as contemptuously as possible. “I know you don’t get it, I know that for you life’s just a string of random fucks and bruises and STDs probably—”

“I hope I don't have any STDs,” Harry says, and pulls a face that reminds Louis so abruptly of the way he used to be that it makes him laugh and then it makes his chest hurt. He’s silent then; they’re both silent, looking at each other, and then Harry bursts out like the words are a volcano, a waterfall, “I don’t get why you let her tell you what to do. She’s not that clever. Just because your mum and dad think she’s great and she’d be some valuable investment opportunity doesn’t mean that you have to be with her. I’ve seen you together, you’re not exactly the world’s most suited couple. She doesn’t even _look_ at you, Louis—”

“She fucking does—”

“—and if you think you look at her as much as you should do, you’re deluded.” Harry’s almost out of breath, his eyes searing into Louis’s like they’re laser beams.

“I look at her,” Louis protests, “I look at her, and—”

“When was the last time you fucked her?” Harry demands. “You saw her yesterday. Did you fuck her then?”

“No,” Louis says, stung, self-righteous, “but that’s not your business—”

“Last weekend? After that party?”

“You know we were both pretty drunk,” Louis says, and even to his own ears his voice is a little lame.

There are pink spots of colour rising triumphantly on Harry’s cheeks and Louis feels defeated as Harry says, “Yeah. Great work, Lou.” His voice is dry and sarcastic but there’s something in it that’s real, that’s more alive than Harry’s sounded in a while. Blood’s thumping through Louis’s ears but there’s a part of him that likes it, even though he doesn’t know entirely how to deal with it.

Harry pulls away then, leaning back against the wall next to Louis. He pulls Aiden’s cigarette out of his pocket and looks at it closely before putting it back in and taking out a pre-rolled one of his own, and Louis says mostly to change the subject, “Why did you start smoking?”

Harry shrugs, eyes narrowed against the smoke, and says, “Peer pressure?”

“Don’t be a twat,” Louis tells him. “Who from? Zayn? Aiden?”

“Aiden couldn’t peer pressure his way out of a paper bag,” Harry tells him, and pushes his hand back into his pocket. He takes out Aiden’s cigarette, a thin white cylinder and, his brow furrowed against the thin grey twirl of smoke from his own cigarette that’s hanging out of the corner of his mouth, he takes Louis’s hands and wraps them around it. “Me, on the other hand…” He laughs a bit and then says contemplatively, “Did you know that Aiden’s gay?”

Louis feels as though quite a few blood vessels in his brain may have exploded. He imagines Aiden’s hands on Harry’s hips and his eyes on Harry’s body and he doesn’t know how to deal with it. He says: “Oh. And have you two…”

Harry laughs, a sweet easy crack, and says, “Fuck no! He’s got a boyfriend. Well, boyfriends, I think. Boys he’s seeing. He’s fairly complicated.”

“Well, so are you,” Louis says, not focussing much on what he’s saying, trying to force his heartrate down to a more acceptable pace. 

“I’m not complicated.” Harry pushes himself off the wall, and then his eyes are on Louis again, more thoughtful than Louis would like. “I’m sort of – pissed off, a lot of the time. I’m not happy. Some bad stuff’s happened. But I mean…” He cocks a shoulder, and his eyes travel up and down Louis’s body in a way that makes Louis feel as though his school uniform’s disintegrating. He feels himself flush but he stares Harry out, watches the corner of Harry’s lips rise. “I know what I want,” Harry explains, “I think. I just need to figure out how to get it.”

“What do you want?” Louis asks, and he turns a bit so that they’re facing each other, shoulders pressed against the wall. There’s something about the way that the curve of Harry’s mouth goes that makes him want to look at it, and at the pale hollow at the base of his throat where he hasn’t bothered to do up his tie properly yet. 

“You know what I want.” Harry reaches out, tugs on the end of Louis’s tie briefly before looking down at the ground. His hair’s falling over his eyes, his stupid shiny hair that he needs to cut, and he turns away from Louis to exhale a long grey plume of smoke into the mid-morning air. There’s something about the space between them that feels almost charged, just a little bit on fire, and it’s as though lights are going off behind Louis’s eyes. He could—

“I don’t think I’m going to stick around for the rest of the day,” Harry says, and leans away again so his back’s against the wall. His cigarette’s almost burned down and he drops it, grinds it out. “It seems like it’ll be boring.”

“It’s school,” Louis says, dull irritation rising again at Harry’s inability to act like a normal person, “of course it’s sometimes boring, you just need to get on with it.”

Harry shrugs. “Don’t feel like it,” he says, and he’s not making eye contact again, as though things have suddenly snapped back to normal.

“It’s just an afternoon,” Louis begins to tell him, painfully aware that he sounds like Liam, and Harry rolls his eyes very deliberately, which means that their vaguely unpleasant and sort of disconcerting discussion is drawing to a close. 

“I’m off,” he says, and stretches as he steps away from the wall. “You seeing El tonight?”

Louis nods, mutely, although the prospect doesn’t particularly appeal to him.

“Do your best to fuck her for me.” Harry grins at him, bright and malicious, before starting to walk away. “Although I know it’ll be tough,” he calls over his shoulder, his voice light as the wind.

Louis knows he just wants to provoke a reaction, he knows he should be steady and mature and not rise to the bait, except he calls back, “It won’t be hard. I’ll tell you all about it!” He hears Harry laugh, feels annoyance rising like dark sticky tar filling up his chest and continues, “And I _don’t_ know what you want!”

It’s true, mostly. He doesn’t know what Harry wants precisely. There are a million things he can guess at but there’s nothing that’s exact and nothing that doesn’t make Louis’s head spin a little bit. He isn’t sure how much he can handle when it comes to Harry, but he knows that Harry could try to push him to the ends of the earth and he doesn’t think he’d snap, doesn’t think he’d shatter into pieces and fade away. He doesn’t know what that means. Nothing, probably. He watches the thin line of Harry’s body as he approaches the corner, long legs in dark trousers, the blue material of his blazer flapping in the breeze, his gold-and-red tie curling like a snake around his neck. Harry looks back once, and smiles, sort of. Louis doesn’t know if it’s real. He feels tired, and as though his head might be able to fall from his shoulders, but he smiles back anyway. Then Harry rounds the corner and he’s gone from Louis’s sight. 

The cigarette is still in his hands. He turns it over. Pale brown filter, thin white cylinder, brown herbs of some sort carefully crushed into the other end. He’s never actually smoked a cigarette before. He doesn’t particularly want to start and get hooked and die of emphysema. He puts it between his lips, though, and it doesn’t feel too weird. He thinks of Harry’s mouth around his own cigarette, his red lips. Then he fishes in his bag for the lighter that he’s sure is in there, the little blue one that Harry left at his house a few weeks ago and that Louis keeps forgetting to return. It takes him a couple of goes to get it lit, and a couple of breaths in before it makes him cough. It’s a thick sour taste at the back of his throat and he’s got no idea why anyone would do it. It’s a dirty habit. It smells like the way that Harry’s hair did the previous night when he rested his cheek on Louis’s shoulder and fell asleep, the way that Louis’s pillows smell the day after Harry’s been sleeping on them. He wishes that Harry had never started. He wishes that a lot of things hadn’t happened. 

He can still feel the tug of Harry’s hand on the bottom of his tie, and the low rumbling of nerves in the bottom of his mind. There’s a soft catch in the back of Louis’s throat, another cough that’s threatening to get out, and he drops the cigarette, grinds it into the ground, and pops some chewing gum out of his pocket. He thinks that maybe it might be time to get back to the real world.


End file.
